Finally, I’m catching up on the Jack updates!

Here is Jack at 17 weeks old, where we didn’t get the fancy photo done…
(May 24th, 2012)

As you can see, Jack is enjoying tummy time slightly more these days, especially when leaning on my stomach.

We’re really enjoying having Jack’s company when we do fun things around town. Here we are enjoying lunch on the patio of a Mexican restaurant on the weekend…

Jack continues to be a challenge in the sleep department. We make some progress and then we regress. Look how cute this picture of my two guys napping…

Jack usually still needs to be swaddled in order to help him fall asleep, even at Starbucks…

Marceau the cat still tolerates Jack, runs for the hills when he cries and sometimes…

They have a face-off for who is cuter.
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Here is Jack at 16 weeks…
(May 17, 2012)

I enjoyed my first Mother’s Day by getting to sleep in! R kept telling me to go back to sleep every time I would wake to care for Jack and I didn’t know why until I finally got out of bed at, like, 9:30am and found these beautiful flowers and cards waiting for me…

And my two favorite guys were smiling at me…

Our bedtime routine is quickly becoming one my favorite things. First, I get Jack in a bath (which is one of his favorite things). Then Daddy arrives home and we all sit together on the bed and Jack drinks a bottle while we read a story. This week we started to read a lot of Curious George, which was fun. It is a joy to watch Jack listen more and more intently and look at the pictures. Finally, Jack gets swaddled, I often sing a short song, kiss him, say, “Good night, sweet dreams” and then I leave the room. R then does a little soothing before placing him in his bed with his Sleep Sheep playing. And we cross our fingers. We’re still working on sleeping through the night (or longer than 4 hours).

We’re tired, but with these cute chubby cheeks waking you in the middle of the night, it’s hard to complain too much…

Can you believe our boy is already 16 weeks? We can’t.
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Here is Jack at 15 weeks old…

This was quite a week! Several new things happened:
-Jack wore baby sunglasses for the first time.
-Jack outgrew his cradle.
-I went back to work.

It’s been hot and sunny in LA so we pulled out the baby sunglasses Amanda F. gave us and, boy, do we love them! I remember thinking baby sunglasses were slightly strange, but now I get it. He looks simultaneously cute and bad-ass. He wore them like a champ and charmed the socks off of the family…

3 generations of dudes in their sunglasses. That’s a framer!

As I already mentioned here, on Tuesday Jack woke up cooing happily and had managed to get himself unswaddled and down toward the bottom of his cradle with his feet through the slats. He now sleeps in his pack and play. He is still swaddled at bedtime, but almost always wakes up with at least one arm out.

That same morning I went back to work. Here I am getting dropped off and saying I’ll-see-you-later to my sweet boy. As you can see, he ignored me…

My return to work went well and Jack-boy did just fine with his familial babysitters, who were kind enough to send me pictures, videos and texts of what he was up to. The first thing I did when I got into the office was to change my computer’s desktop background to a picture of my baby boy. The 3-day work week is just right. By the time the third day rolled around I was ready to be back spending more time with Jack. I am happy with my schedule!

Jack is still only sleeping one long 4-hour stretch at night, but continues to do well getting to sleep on his own most of the time as long as he is swaddled, soothed and drowsy. I won’t lie – it is hard to go to work all day after fitful sleep.

Here are some other favorite poses from this week’s photo shoot…

How much do we love our boy? Sooooooooo much!
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